Departmental Internet

Grant Shapps: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much has been spent on  (a) strategy and planning,  (b) design and build,  (c) hosting and infrastructure,  (d) content provision and  (e) testing and evaluation for her Department's websites in each of the last three years; and what budget has been allocated for such activities in 2009-10.

Jim Knight: Websites managed within the Department include:
	DWP Corporate
	Jobcentre Plus
	The Pension Service (this site closed September 2009)
	Child Support Agency
	Directgov (cross government site)
	Now Let's Talk Money
	Independent Living Funds
	NDDP Job Broker Search
	Office for Disability Issues
	European Social Fund
	Ethnic Minority Employment Task force
	The Pensions Advisory Service
	Industrial Injuries Advisory Council
	Social Security Advisory Committee
	Personal Accounts Delivery Authority
	Working for Health
	CMEC
	CM Options
	Remploy
	Pension Protection Fund
	The Pensions Ombudsman
	Pensions Protection Fund Ombudsman
	Pensions Regulator
	Independent Case Examiner
	Health and Safety Executive
	Ongoing creation, development and maintenance of websites managed by the Department is mainly carried out by the Department's own in-house digital media team and in-house maintenance team. It is not possible for us to extract and quantify previous or forecast costs for the all the categories requested, in particular strategy and content provision, because in most cases, staff working across these areas are engaged in more than one role and/or website. Similarly, our hosting and infrastructure costs form part of a wider departmental IT contract.
	We can provide figures for the redevelopment of the DWP website and the Office for Disability Issues website as we ran separate projects with separate budgets within the last three years. The costs quoted are for design and build work only and are not an annual cost.
	
		
			   Website  Cost (£000) 
			 2008-09 DWP Corporate 216 
			 2007-08 Office for Disability Issues 147 
		
	
	There are no plans to spend money on design and build in 2009-10 for these two websites.
	Figures available for testing and evaluation are:
	
		
			Cost (£000) 
			  Website   
			 2008-09 The Pension Service 21 
			 2008-09 Jobcentre Plus 20 
			
			  Planned spend   
			 2009-10 The Pension Service 19 
			 2009-10 Jobcentre Plus 13 
			 2009-10 DWP Corporate 3 
			 2009-10 Office for Disability Issues 6 
		
	
	There is no separate Directgov budget for the elements specified.
	We are working with Cabinet Office to implement a standardised method for quantifying website costs across Government in line with Central Office of Information guidelines. This is in response to a Public Accounts Committee recommendation. These costs will be available from April 2010 onwards as per the timetable.